


WGSS 311, Women, Queer Men, and Food as Love

by RembrandtsWife



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Baking, Childhood Memories, Christmas, Christmas Cookies, Christmas Fluff, Food as a Metaphor for Love, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 22:18:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8941573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/RembrandtsWife
Summary: Bitty bakes, Jack munches, and they both remember.





	

Jack remembers coming in off the backyard rink with his dad when he was nine or ten, cold and hungry but happy because it was CHRISTMAS and he and dad were playing HOCKEY and Uncle Wayne and Uncle Mario were coming over later with PRESENTS and Mom was BAKING. The house smelled so good--the fresh tree that had been cut only yesterday, the scent getting stronger as it warmed up in the house, the coffee brewing, the hot chocolate on the stove, the sweetness of cookies cooling and cookies baking and sugar vanilla cinnamon everywhere.

He and Papa left their skates and sticks and things in the mudroom and hurried into the kitchen. Papa hugged and kissed Mom and they laughed together while Jack wiped his nose then blew and washed his hands. He sat at the table with his cup of hot chocolate and ate a sugar cookie, a chocolate chip cookie, a ginger cookie, another chocolate chip cookie. Mom refilled his cup with some warm milk, and before he knew it, he was curling up in bed for a nap.

Bitty remembers staying at Moomaw's right before Christmas while his mother was still working, taking extra hours during the holiday rush. Moomaw spent most of her time in the kitchen. She had an armchair and a little table in one corner, with a tiny black and white television that also got radio stations, so when she wasn't cooking or baking, she could put her feet up and watch the stories or listen to the news.

When Bitty was there at Christmastime, though, Moomaw was almost always cooking or baking. He learned to measure the ingredients, to sift the flour and splash the vanilla extract, to roll out dough to the right consistency, to time things and test them. Moomaw took Polaroids of him, holding a little tray of cookies with an outsized yellow oven mitt on his tiny hand, gripping the big rolling pin and leaning his whole body into the effort, cutting the dough into strips to criss-cross the top of an apple pie. Moomaw told stories about when Mother was a little girl, about the War (World War Two), about her brother Martin, who died long before Bitty was born. The kitchen was a place for stories, gossip, handing on traditions, keeping warm together.

What Bitty learned most from Moomaw, and his mother, too, is that food tastes like feelings, that it can be like a letter from one person to another. A woman who's angry at her husband for cheating on her might never say anything, but she'd burn his dinner every night, especially when it was his favorite dish. And if you love someone, you can tell them with a pie you baked and they'll taste your feelings as surely as if you wrote them a letter and they read it.

Jack comes home after his last practice before Christmas, cold and tired and hungry, but happy because he has a few days off and he can spend it with Bitty. The house smells of the live tree they decorated and of Bitty's tireless baking; he's been talking about trying a bouche de Noel. He heads straight for the kitchen and hugs a warm, floury Bitty who smells like all the sweet good things he's been making, then stops off in the bathroom and washes his hands after. He sits down at the small kitchen table with a homemade cafe mocha and a plate of cookies, rolled sugar, drop sugar, chocolate chip, ginger snap. He listens as he munches to Bitty talk about learning to bake rolled sugar cookies with his Moomaw and what Christmas was like as a child. Maybe he can get Bitty out of the kitchen this afternoon long enough for a cuddle and a nap.

Bitty looks at Jack smiling through a mouthful of cookie, a little streak of foam from the mocha on his upper lip, and is so grateful he was taught how food can make you feel things, food can be love. He thinks Jack understands. It's going to be a great Christmas.


End file.
